


the boy who listened to bones

by tin_girl



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Angst, Canon is Mostly Ignored, Hades is a Bad Parent, Hades is a Good Parent, M/M, Nico won't try at all, Not anything too graphic, Overuse of Metaphor, Percy is going through an existential crisis in the background, Self-Harm, Suicide Attempt, Underage Drinking, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, War, Will tries too hard, also, he tries alright, no actual suicide, what even is this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:00:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23614144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tin_girl/pseuds/tin_girl
Summary: Will, when angry, is like a harvest sun.Nico doesn’t ever tell him why he follows him, shadow-quiet, because he thinks Will would hate him for it: how when it’s his turn to go, Nico wants to be near him, wants to be one of those limp bodies that Will fights for, forcing them to live even when they’re long dead.Or, Nico frequents cemeteries, tries to get over Percy, and can't stop watching Will refuse to let people die.
Relationships: Nico di Angelo/Will Solace, one-sided Nico di Angelo/Percy Jackson - Relationship
Comments: 21
Kudos: 118





	the boy who listened to bones

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING, I didn't know how to rate this or what warnings to use. I'm not sure if 'graphic descriptions of violence' is accurate, but better safe than sorry, right? It's quite grim at times, this story, but there's no detailed descriptions of gory stuff or anything like that. 
> 
> Also, this is one chaotic story. Nico has some abilities in this that I'm not sure he had in the books since I last read them years and years ago. And canon? Don't know him. There's a war going on in this, but it's never specified which war. Whichever war, really. There's implied Annabeth/Rachel but it's just one line so I didn't put it in the relationship tags. Anyway, enjoy!

but when the time came, nothing could stop me, i tell you: // i made a living of my death

~Toi Derricotte, _Answers from Anne_

He first goes to the cemetery while drunk, after confessing his love to Percy.

It took repeating it three times before Percy understood that it wasn’t some dude-bro-affection Nico was talking about, and by then Nico was too exasperated to back off, curling his fingers tight on the neck of the beer bottle to keep himself from strangling a hum of understanding out of Percy’s stupid, stupid throat.

Percy was the reason why he’d gotten drunk in the first place.

“I’m not gay,” he said, uncomprehending, staring at Nico with eyes that were all water. “I couldn’t be.”

Said it like being gay was the Black Death, and Nico felt the hurt in his very marrow because he knew of The Black Death, too many bones and all at once, human tibia and rat skulls.

Nico shadow-travelled to the nearest place that felt like somewhere with enough air for him to breathe, and when he collapsed and saw the tombstones, he was too tired to leave. Instead, he sprawled on his back between the graves, closed his eyes, and listened to the echoes of stupid people like him who’d loved someone and then died, good or bad. One miserable fellow was buried on Nico’s left, no flowers, no nothing, and Nico could tell from the very smell of his bones that he’d been hunchbacked, and could smell the insults, too, so he tipped the beer bottle still in his hand and let the alcohol spill and get soaked up by the earth.

“To cheer you up,” he told the bones, and curled up on his side like something about to be born rather than something about to die from loneliness.

Now, he’s been at the cemetery for two days, trying to will himself to get up and trying to forget Percy by remembering him until he’s sick with it.

*

“I’m not gay,” Percy said. “I couldn’t be.”

I couldn’t be, as if he wasn’t _allowed_ to be, and Nico knows something about that, stories and fame and expectations, good or bad, the world bruised with so much as a twitch of his hand, and how what you’re supposed to be is shaped after what you’re not.

Nico hated water, once, and then he fell in love, and would stare at faucets, letting it trickle over his hands.

*

The second time he goes to the cemetery, there are empty beer cans next to his grave.

Well, not _his_ grave.

He scoops wet earth into the cans, and tries to make something grow before he remembers that he can only make things wilt.

*

When the girl’s hand stops twitching, Nico can tell from Will Solace’s face that it’s the first kid to ever die on him. He looks like he won’t sit down, for fear he wouldn’t get back up again, and Nico, in a sudden onslaught of kindness, doesn’t tell him that the war has barely just started, old gods hungry in Tartarus, waiting for warm blood to drip on their fingers so they can lick them clean.

When they cover the body up with a white sheet, Will stares at the spot where the fabric sags over the girl’s tilted-open mouth as if he expects it to rise on a hiccup of a breath, and Nico looks away from the grief all over his face, wishing they’d take the kid away already.

“You’re too young to be seeing this,” Will says, absent-minded, as if he’s just remembered, and folds his palm over Nico’s eyes. Nico doesn’t bat his hand away, because he doesn’t know what to do with the warmth of Will’s skin, has forgotten all about touch.

“Oh,” he breathes, feeling alive like sin. “I’ve seen so much worse.”

Will keeps his palm over Nico’s eyes, anyway, and Nico lets him.

*

“It’s too late.”

Will won’t listen, continues with the chest compressions, looks like he’d be tearing at his hair if he could spare a hand.

Nico knows he will be able to spare a hand soon enough.

“No use breaking her ribs, now,” he says, cruel. “She’ll look all shapeless for the burial.”

Will would probably strangle him, if he weren’t too busy trying to beat life back into a half-corpse.

“Dead, now,” Nico says, because he can feel it like water trickling out of cupped hands. “Spare yourself the trouble, would you?”

Will doesn’t stop until he’s too tired to keep up the rhythm.

“She’s been dead for three minutes now, you know,” Nico tells him, chin propped on his hand. He himself is either numb to all the death, or pretending, can’t tell anymore.

Will tries to breathe air into the girl’s lungs one last time, anyway, and Nico will remember it – Will offering his air even though it’s too late, even though no one asked for it.

Nico hates himself sometimes, really.

*

“It’s too late,” Nico tells Will, a hand on his shoulder as the kid on the ground next to them whimpers and gurgles blood.

“Can’t you—” Will starts, breath quick, quick, red all over his hands, too much to be real, but, _oh_ , it’s real. “Can’t you _stop it_?”

Nico shakes his head, and Will’s shoulders slump. He swallows, throat working around grief.

“Can you make it _fast_ , then?”

Nico sighs, and obliges, because the kid is choking on the blood now, trying to say ‘mom’, or maybe because Will’s shoulder is shaking under his hand like unsteady vibration no matter how tight he grips it, who can tell?

He chases life out of the boy’s veins, coaxes it out like a skittish animal, and neither of them will ever call it killing.

Later, he sits Will down on a chair, loose-limbed and dead-eyed like a doll, and dips cotton swabs in alcohol to wash the last of the blood from his hands, dry under his fingernails.

“Next time, it needs to be even faster,” Will tells him, voice dead, and Nico agrees, because he’d agree to anything for someone who pours themselves out like it’ll do anyone any good, like there’ll always be something left, like it’s not all going to waste.

When the water trickles over Will’s hands, stained brown, Nico almost bends low over the tap to drink it.

*

Once, Bianca dragged him outside by the hand, yelling about how snow was her favorite thing, catching it on her tongue, eyelashes coated white.

“Earth loves it, too,” she said, and Nico knew she was right, because he could feel the snow melting and old, nameless bones drinking it greedily, washed clean.

*

“I’m no good,” Will says, and Nico whispers _solace, solace, solace_ into a scar he has on his wrist at night, because he’s too much of a coward to say it to Will’s face.

All that shadow travel, all those monsters, and, in the end, the only thing that almost managed to kill him was a small, vertical cut.

*

People too often make the mistake of thinking Nico’s father the lord of Death, when he’s but its servant. Faithful and favorite, yes, but a mere servant nonetheless, with Nico a stupid kid clinging to his tattered robes, not important enough to be spared.

Death spares him, anyway, and it disgusts Nico that he should be alive when Earth is swollen with bones but he never takes a knife to his wrist again, promises his father, I won’t, and presses it to the soft skin of the inside of his thigh instead, where it will remind him he’s dust but won’t turn him into a fistful of it.

No solace, too many kids trying not to die in the infirmary, and the world’s spine bending under the selfish whims of things older than time, teenagers fighting for minutes as their grandparents blindly grasp for forever.

“Will,” Nico says, and there’s no water. “Will, oh Will.”

*

“Why are you always here, why are you always standing here and watching them die, why are you always here and doing this to yourself—”

Will, when angry, is like a harvest sun.

Nico doesn’t ever tell him why he follows him, shadow-quiet, because he thinks Will would hate him for it: how when it’s his turn to go, Nico wants to be near him, wants to be one of those limp bodies that Will fights for, forcing them to live even when they’re long dead.

Someone trying to keep him even once he’s gone, and Nico almost wants to be gone, just to know what it’s like.

The next time Will says, can you make it fast, Nico says, wait, he might survive, I mean, he will die, I’m sure he’ll die, but I’m _not_ sure—

His fingers are cold, but his fingers are always cold.

When Will gets tired of the chest compressions, Nico takes over, and, hands folded over the boy’s chest, he thinks that he’d kill anything, to have this war end.

*

He doesn’t think about Percy, because he knows that if Percy’s supposed to die _I couldn’t be_ he will.

He doesn’t cup water in his hands, either, there’s no water, there’s no time.

*

By the time the war ends, Nico has killed (n) monsters, (3) people, (0) himself.

Will finds him, once, as Nico’s crying soundlessly in his bed, and he thanks him, and Nico _hates him_. Will sits down at the edge of the bed, and Nico remembers how they met, which is to say they didn’t, not really, not ever, Will this kid with fluffy hair always at least three clusters of people away, staring but never coming close.

Now, Will slides Nico’s shoes off his feet and stares at his hands, no blood there, not anymore.

Nico feels it all over himself, showers five times a day, and not to feel the water.

“You’re in love with Percy, aren’t you?” Will asks, neutral. Before, when Percy appeared out of nowhere, soot-covered, in that perpetual state of confusion of his and _whole_ , Nico very carefully didn’t stare. He pretended to scratch his forearm with his nose, and dragged that old scar there along his lips, trying to taste his own sickness, a reminder, _you hate yourself._

“That’s none of your business, now, is it,” Nico says, because he’s shaking, because why would Will care, because Will _doesn’t_ care, because death, so much death, because they’re not anything, because they watched people die on them together, two pairs of hands and useless, anyway.

“Just an observation, Nico.”

“Sounded like a question, Will.”

Nico likes the way Will says his name, like there’s never been any rumors about him, like Nico’s just some kid from camp, important or not, and not Olympic gossip and people parting before him in case the death is catching.

“Answer, then,” Will says, and, when Nico shakes his head, grabs his wrist, gentle, and turns it over, pressing his thumb to the scar. He drags his fingertip along the scarred skin, and Nico closes his eyes and pretends it’s care.

The day after, he goes back to the cemetery, and listens to the sound bones make when they’re old, no meat on them anymore, nothing bitter.

*

When Percy and Annabeth broke up, Percy seemed too surprised to be sad, like he’d never considered that they ever would.

That they ever _could_.

“I mean, you love someone, and you _love someone_ , and then— you die, right? _You_ die, or _they_ die, or you don’t, or they don’t, but you don’t stop loving them, do you?” Percy blubbered to Nico once, drunk, head lolling, lolling, almost to Nico’s shoulder.

It was for the best when he tumbled to the ground instead, because Nico’s shoulders were bony, and no one would want to rest their forehead there.

(Months later, Will—)

“There’s no myths about it,” Nico said. It wasn’t really a confirmation.

“Exactly,” Percy said, finger up, like they were on the same page. They weren’t. “No myths about something that doesn’t happen.”

“No myths about something that isn’t glorious,” Nico said. It wasn’t a confirmation either.

“ _Exactly_ ,” Percy whispered, and then fell asleep, right there on the ground. Nico wanted to keep him warm somehow, but he only knew about cold things.

*

The first time they hear someone laugh after the war, Will very carefully doesn’t look over, keeps his gaze down, keeps himself quiet.

“Look—” Nico starts, doesn’t finish. “You should— _Solace_ —”

“Shut up,” Will says, meek, like he doesn’t mean it. He cards his fingers through the hair brushing Nico’s nape, keeps them there, fists but doesn’t tug. Nico doesn’t say a word, and doesn’t breathe for the longest time. At first it’s because he doesn’t want to startle Will, but soon it’s because he knows once he does dare breathe, it’ll be a gasp. When he opens his mouth at last, Will knows, because he always knows, knows everything, the fucker, and puts his hand flat on Nico’s chest, the other still tangled in his hair.

“Breathe, di Angelo.”

Nico does, so loud that his father must hear it down in the underworld.

Maybe, Nico thinks, he even smiles.

*

After Nico slit his wrist, Hades yelled and yelled and yelled.

He was a god, but he looked like any other overworked, middle-aged, miserable soul.

“Did you think you’d get to see her if you did this?!” he raged, but it was a broken thing, voice cracking on the words. “Did you think this would help?!”

Nico didn’t say anything. He hadn’t thought, period. He had ached, and then he did the easiest thing that would ease the pain. It wasn’t his fault that relief had to be red.

Hades grabbed him by the collar, almost lifted Nico off his feet like that, only Nico thought he wasn’t quite strong enough to do so, just then, tendons straining even though Nico was skin and bones and not enough blood. His powerful, powerful father, bruised eyes and a slouch.

“Don’t you think I’ll let you so much as lay eyes on her if you kill yourself,” Hades growled, something desperate in his eyes, something that reminded Nico of animals chewing their legs off to escape a trap. “I won’t let you anywhere near her if you off yourself, do you hear me?”

Spittle on Nico’s cheek.

“ _Do you hear me_?”

He heard.

*

Nico kisses Connor Stall because he wants to kiss Will Solace.

Will watches across the room and doesn’t look away.

“I thought you were in love with me,” Percy says later, frowning, confused. He has a beer in his hand, because, these days, he always has a beer in his hand, and Nico doesn’t know what to do with him.

“I thought you didn’t want me,” he says, prying the can from Percy’s shaking fingers.

“I don’t,” Percy says, something stubborn about it, and Nico doesn’t know if it’s true or not, feels sorry for him, anyhow. Annabeth is not at the impromptu party, laughing with Rachel elsewhere because she won’t rub it in Percy’s face.

“She said I’m like her brother, can you believe?” Percy says suddenly, like he’s read Nico’s thoughts. “Good thing we used a condom that one time, because I tremble to think what the children would have turned out like. There’s enough incest in our cosy Olympic family as it is, ha.”

Nico drags Percy outside, sits him down in a boat, and pushes it off the shore with his foot. Percy watches him, the boat slowly drifting away. He won’t drown even if he tries, and Nico hopes – _knows_ – that he’ll feel better, alone, surrounded by water and by quiet.

Will doesn’t find him, and Nico doesn’t kiss anyone again.

*

Once, Bianca ate snow by handfuls, and she seemed so alive that, after, for the longest time, Nico simply couldn’t believe that she was dead.

*

Nico gets it all ready, lies down in the cemetery, between two tombstones, all ready for the burial. He’s even brushed his teeth, brushed his hair.

He grips the knife, maps out his veins, remembers his father’s promise, and knows Hades won’t keep it. Scared to lose Nico, babbling stupid things—

He wouldn’t keep him from Bianca, he wouldn’t _dare_.

Nico presses the tip of the knife to his skin, listens to the tired howling of all those bones. Remembers Will Solace breaking kids’ ribs, trying to keep them alive long after they’d died, and drops the knife, can’t.

“Fuck you, fuck you, fuck _you_ ,” he says. It takes him two days to get up, and when he does, he dusts off his pants, and walks West.

*

The War stole Will’s laughter, and Nico would kill Her for it if he knew how.

*

He learns shadow play to keep himself company, dim desk lamps and rabbits leaping from wall to wall after a crook of his fingers. He laughs himself silly doing it, thinks Bianca would, too, almost hears her, even, only whenever he goes quiet himself, there’s no sound.

*

Will finds him in New York, flushed-cheeked and pretending not to have been looking.

“What a coincidence,” he says, somewhat angrily, when Nico arches his eyebrow at being joined in the small coffee shop he’s been frequenting.

“Yes,” he says, grinning at Will over the rim of his latte glass. “Pure happenstance, I’m sure.”

“Look,” Will says, squaring his shoulders on the other side of the small table – small enough for their knees to bump under it – and crumpling a tissue in his hands. “I’m not going to tell you how to live your life, but you should date me.”

Nico hums, interested.

“There are a lot of pros,” Will says, frowning like he’s not quite sure why he’s speaking at all. “A lot of cons, too, sure, but— I mean— Why would you just disappear?”

Nico doesn’t know what to say. He thinks that Will wouldn’t believe him if Nico confessed that he feels — inadequate, like he could never be good enough.

“Places to go, people to see,” he says lightly, waving his hand.

“Oh, forget it, I know that you don’t—” Will cuts off, irritated, and points to himself.

Nico would die for him, only he never had to.

“I’ll take you on a date to this one place I like, and if you still want to date me then, we’ll give it a try, how about that?” Nico says, leaning closer over the table. Will watches him in silence, takes a sip of Nico’s coffee – oversugared and gone cold – and nods.

*

In the cemetery, Will lies down next to him on the ground, and listens to the earth even though he won’t hear a thing. Everything is still like the dead are keeping quiet just for Nico, and it doesn’t feel so lonely, this silence of bones.

“There are no myths like that,” he says, and Will frowns at him, confused.

“Thank gods for that!”

Nico’s ready to cup his hands and catch everything that Will will pour out of himself in order to return it to him lest it goes to waste, or keep it safe, selfishly, to himself.

When it starts snowing, War dies, and Will laughs.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!! <3 If you have any thoughts please consider leaving a comment? They make me extremely happy :,) Feel free to point out any mistakes, too, English is not my first language so I'm sure there's plenty. It's my first fic for this fandom but definitely not the last because Nico <333
> 
> Oh, and if anyone's interested, here's a link to my original story: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23463895/chapters/56249917 
> 
> (It's about boarding school kids getting involved in art theft but it has a lot of mythology references even if no mythology as such, and there's enthusiastic boys growing up to hate the world and falling in love)


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